and the Army. The Protector against Parliament and army, the Parliament against army and Protector, and the army against Protector and Parliament.
A. In the beginning of 1659 the Parliament passed divers other acts. One was, to forbid the meetings in council of the army-officers without order from the Protector and both the Houses; another, that no man shall have any command or *place of* trust in the army, who did not first, under his hand, engage himself never to interrupt any of the members, but that they might freely meet and debate in the House. And to please the soldiers, they voted to take presently into consideration the means of paying them their arrears. But whilst they were considering this, the Protector (according to the first of those acts) forbad the meeting of officers at Wallingford House. This made the government, which by the disagreement of the Protector and army was already loose, to fall in pieces. For the officers from Wallingford House, with soldiers enough, came over to Whitehall, and brought with them a commission ready drawn (giving power to Desborough to dissolve the Parliament) for the Protector to sign; which also, his heart and his party failing him, he signed. The Parliament nevertheless continued sitting; but at the end of the week the House adjourned till the Monday after, being April the 25th. At their coming on Monday morning, they found the door of the House shut up, and the passages to it filled with soldiers, who plainly told them they must sit no longer. Richard’s authority and business in town being thus at an end, he retired into the country; where within a few days (upon promise of the payment of his debts, which his father’s funeral had made great) he signed a resignation of his Protectorship.
B. To whom?
A. To nobody. But after ten days’ cessation of the sovereign, power, some of the Rumpers that were in town, together with the old Speaker, Mr. William Lenthal, resolved amongst themselves, and with Lambert, Hazlerig, and other officers, who were also Rumpers, in all forty-two, to go
